- Anna Wintour is a British media executive
- She has been the editor-in-chief of Vogue since 1988
- Wintour is also the organizer of the Met Gala every year
Anna Wintour is one of the biggest names in fashion. She is the editor-in-chief of Vogue and is the chief organizer of the Met Gala. Wintour, 75, has had a long and illustrious career in fashion. Her approval and invite mean status, which is why tickets to the Met cost $75,000 and her approval.
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The upcoming Met Gala is on 5 May and the theme is Superfine: Tailoring Black Style. The dress code is “tailored for you”. Essentially, it will explore looks related to Black dandyism, a practice where rich white people would dress up black people in their clothes to show off their wealth. In particular, it was also an era for men’s fashion, as the theme will focus on menswear.
But outside of the Met Gala, who is Wintour?
Who is Anna Wintour?
Before she was the queen of the bob and Vogue, Wintour was elsewhere. Let’s go back.
Early life of Anna Wintour
Wintour was born in the rich London suburb of Hampstead to Charles Wintour, editor of the Evening Standard Newspaper, and her mother, Eleanor Trego Baker. She was born on 3 November 1949.
Wintour has many famous and noble relatives dating back generations. Her stepmother was Audrey Slaughter, a magazine editor who founded Petticoat and Honey. One of Wintour’s four siblings, Patrick Wintour, is the diplomatic editor of The Guardian.
From a young age, Winter wore her hair in her signature bob. She would even take up the hemlines of her skirts. Her fashion interest began through watching television and through reading the American magazine Seventeen.
Her career – fashion and beyond
Wintour’s father got her a job at the Biba boutique at age 15. After leaving college, she began a training programme at luxury department store Harrods. Her fashion career began in the 1970s when she worked as an editorial assistant for Harper’s & Queen, now known as Harper’s Bazaar.
Later, she moved to New York and became a junior fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar in 1975. After being fired from Bazaar, she landed a job at Viva, a women’s adult magazine.
Later, she became editor of the women’s magazine Savvy after taking some time off work when Viva shut down. However, she did not stay very long and became the fashion editor of New York. She observed the popularity of celebrities and used this to coordinate shoots and covers with them.
She even had an interview at Vogue!
Road to Vogue
Wintour became the creative director of Vogue in 1983 after serious negotiations for the job. She took over the UK version of Vogue in 1985 when the editor retired. She made unpopular changes to the staff and exercised control over the magazine, and obtained many unpleasant nicknames from it!
However, she was able to change the readership to appeal to a new kind of woman and stylized the magazine like an American one. She had a disastrous stint at Home & Garden, but later became editor of US Vogue in 1988. Her first shoot in November 1988 featured model Michaela Bercu in a bejeweled T-shirt and cheap jeans.
Under her, Vogue had a surge in readership in the 1990s and focused on fashion. Wintour also helped produce the legendary spinoff magazines, Teen Vogue, Vogue Living, and Men’s Vogue. Though many core editors and staff left under her rule, her tightly run ship proved effective.
Although she had many controversies with the magazine in the 2000s, Wintour continued her position. She later became the artistic director for magazines under Condé Nast in 2013. She is now the global editorial director of Vogue and the chief content officer of Condé Nast.
In 1995, she began her involvement with the Met Gala when she took over as chair of the Costume Institute Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
She is so iconic that the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada is reportedly based on her and the novel of the same name by Lauren Weisberger. Weisberger was one of the assistants to Wintour for 11 months.
Her relationships
As a fashion girlie, Wintour has had many high-profile relationships with men. She dated columnist Nigel Dempster in her late teens. In 1984, she married a child psychiatrist, David Schaffer, and they had a son and daughter and divorced in 1999.
She later married Shelby Bryan, a telecommunications pioneer, in 2004, but they divorced in 2020.
